


A Devouring Kind

by yourestuckinmyhead



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, also wolf!klaus plays a huge part in this, angst and purple prose, but not in a sex way! sickos!, curses and murder and mayhem OH MY, i don't know who i am anymore, i think this officially qualifies as angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-29 04:18:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15065000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourestuckinmyhead/pseuds/yourestuckinmyhead
Summary: They haven't spoken in years, but he is calling her.Something has gone terribly wrong.





	1. an Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Things with sharp teeth will eventually bite.

 

 

It had been a love story, of sorts. Long ago. That’s what he remembers.

 

Love, it had been love. A love. That’s what he tells himself when he is about to drift off to sleep.

 

 _Love, you are lovely._ _You and your golden curls and hope filled eyes and--_

 

Hope.

 

He gets out of bed. There is no use sleeping when all he’s going to be doing is thinking about her face and how she wouldn’t be able to recognize him. Not after how he has changed.

 

______

  
  


She should be used to them, the ghosts. 

 

She’s been alive long enough to know that they never leave. Still, she sometimes imagines Tyler’s sharp canine smile and the gentle rest of Stefan’s hand on her shoulder and the heartiness of her mother’s laugh and--she just might cry.

 

Her girls walk in and she smiles at them because that is what she does. 

 

“Hope told us that you know her father.” Lizzie says. And she keeps smiling. 

 

“Knew, Sweethearts. Past tense.” They’re older now, sixteen and curious. Sixteen and brazen and powerful. They might push, but she hopes they don’t. Not about him.

 

“She  _ knew  _ her father, too. She also said that you  _ knew  _ her mother and the rest of her family. She said that you were keeping secrets. She said that he had loved--”

 

She sighs. She’s tired, so tired. From somewhere deep inside she pulls a thread of calm. 

 

“It was all a long time ago.” She says. Her daughters look at her and she can see them tracing the outside of her eyes, looking for lines that should be there--that will never be there--and they are almost as old as she was when she died the first time and she feels a creek in her bones that will never exist.

 

“Go get Hope. I’m going to tell you a story.”

 

________

 

He wonders, sometimes, where she’s gone. 

 

It feels like it has been so long, so terribly impossibly long, since he has seen her.

 

He aches and aches and aches.

 

It’s terrible, he should leave her be--drown his sorrows in this bar or the next or the next--but he can’t help but wonder what she’s up to.

 

He dreams her a happy life, and then wakes up and paints her. Paints them all, together.

 

Let them be happy.

 

_________

 

Hope is sitting in their kitchen, her daughters are on either side. She’s cut up some apples for them to snack on while she talks, while she tells them--

 

She clears her throat, their eyes were already on her, but now they are ice cold. They are expecting something from her. 

 

“When I was seventeen years old, a vampire--the doppelganger of Aunt Elena--killed me. Turned me...and it all started from there, I guess. For me anyway, but it really started with her. The doppelganger. 

 

Her name was Katherine Pierce.”

 

________

 

He rolls out of bed. It’s another day. Another moment he has to fill. For forever. Forever and ever alone.

 

________

 

“Was? Past tense?” They are done eating now, the three of them. Somehow they are all so close, intertwined. It makes Caroline miss Bonnie, miss Elena. Miss being a part of something bigger than herself. She misses--

 

“Yes, past tense. She is super dead, and that’s good! Because she was kind of the worst. Well, anyway. It was five hundred years ago, Hope’s father was trying to break a curse his mother had placed on him--”

 

“That he couldn’t access his werewolf side.”

 

“Exactly.” She nods, “Katherine was the key to breaking that curse, but she wanted no part in it. She didn’t want to die. So, she tricked some vampires into helping her out, and escaped.”

 

Her daughters keep glancing at Hope, who looks resigned. “I’m aware of the fact my father was once a very bad man, that he is still not a great one. This isn’t a surprise to me. Besides, this was over half a millennium ago. A lot has happened since then.”

 

She grinds her teeth. A lot has.

 

__________

  
  


He was once the most powerful creature on the planet. Was. Past tense, impossibly so. Because he had not become less, oh no. The world had just become  _ more _ , and he has stayed the same.

 

Perhaps.

 

It still felt like he had power running through his bones, he had strength inside him that screamed Old at those who were listening for it. Still, to those who walked by him--those with deaf ears--he was just a twentysomething drunk in a bar at noon.

 

__________

 

“I didn’t know him for long. Not really--not long enough for him to have mattered as much as he did. He was a villain,  _ the _ villain, and he was my hero once or twice too. I tried to kill him and he tried to kill me, but we were also saving each other. I think.

 

You might have called it a fascination, a promise...we had the potential to  _ be  _ something. Each of us, together. If we were to let it happen.”

 

“Then how come he never told me about you?” Hope bites out.

 

She wonders about this too, about how everything that they had been--how large it had felt--could be reduced to an almost.

 

“How come you never told us about him?” Josie asks.

 

“Because…” and she waves her hands, as if to shoo away the whole question. “Because it was only a possibility. A half spoken ‘maybe’. It wasn’t a whirlwind romance, okay? It was just…”

 

She doesn’t know, what it was ‘just,’ because she had never tried to put into words before, what they had been to each other. Not lovers, though he had loved her. Not friends, though she had cared for him like one, like more than one. No, they were just something that could have been.

 

“You know, he told me once--not about you, exactly--about a woman he used to know. When he had first moved back to New Orleans. He said that he had been fascinated by her, by her honesty, by how she reminded him so much of someone he was trying to forget.” And it’s true. She can see it in Hope’s eyes, just how much Hope wants to hurt her. 

 

She laughs, just a bit. Just enough to bite off the edge in her voice when she says, “I can’t blame him, it’s not like I hadn’t already moved on.”

 

__________

 

How is he supposed to remain alone? He remembers walking past Elijah in that one bar that one night, he remembers that hapless grin, he remembers Rebekah walking away from them all. 

 

It had always been the three of them, in one way or another. 

 

He also remembers having to leave Hope behind. 

 

He regrets her name, sometimes. He wishes he had given her something with a little less impact. 

 

A little less bite.

 

__________

 

Hope, Josie, and Lizzie have all combined their staring power--they are downright terrifying when they put their minds to it--but she isn’t going to break.

 

“What?” She says, because this can’t be news to them. They have to know that she and Rick had done the whole ‘co-parenting would be easier with marriage’ dance, at least from his side of things. She had never hesitated to tell them about her friends, about her love life. 

 

She never wanted to tell them about the long line of ghosts that followed her, and she never wanted to tell them the role that Hope’s father had played.

 

“He kept a bunch of drawings of you. I have one, that’s how I knew.” Hope is staring at her with tears in her eyes.

 

And it’s a hard pill to swallow. 

 

“How could you say that about him? About being ‘almosts’? About moving on and--”

 

“We...we didn’t work. Not then, not in the moment and he knew that, Hope. He walked away, the second he realized that  _ you  _ were something real, he walked away. I don’t hate him for that, not even a little bit. But I had to keep living my life, I had to keep loving those around me…

 

I fell in love with my best friend Stefan. We fell in love and we got married, and then he told me that he loved me but not enough to walk away from certain death. So he died. And I love him still, and I don’t hate him for not loving me more.”

 

A deep breathe, a steely resolve. 

 

“But don’t you dare imply that I broke your father’s heart, Hope. A long time ago I refused to be his reason to hurt people, to terrorize others into getting what he wants. I never wanted to be that, and he respected my choice. Okay? I think we’re done here.”

 

She left them in the kitchen, and they didn’t speak about this again for a very long time.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ignores season 5 of The Originals but takes place in the canon--enough in the canon anyway. I'm leaving it all in, baby! (Incuding the babies! Which started as plot points I hated and now have a mild disinterest in. Whatever man, ppl change.)
> 
> This is my first fic attempt in like a year? I'm aiming for a multi-chap shit show, so lets see how this goes. 
> 
> (I know where it's going enough for you not to worry.)
> 
> (I'm worried but that's a seperate issue.)


	2. we've heard it all before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is the discovery, past the introduction but still the beginning.

He calls her on the phone, somehow.

 

She doesn’t know if she’s surprised.

 

“Klaus? How did you get this number?” Because she will never bend, after all this time.

 

He sighs, a romantic sigh. The kind of sigh that says enough, if you listen. “I’ve always had your number, Caroline.”

 

A small breathe escapes from her mouth. She had forgotten what her name sounded like when it had just rolled from his tongue.

 

“Klaus,” she responds. Lets the syllables roll over her tongue, languidly, it has been so long since she has said his name.

 

“Caroline.” With a smile, this time. She can hear it though the phone.

 

“ _Klaus_.”

 

“Sweetheart, I’ve been thinking...I’ve been thinking of you.”

 

 _You_ , he says. It is his most delicate confession.

 

It’s the first time they’ve spoken in over ten years.

 

(She surrounds him, still. After all this time.)

 

__________

 

She is on a plane, not for the first time. No, she has done her world traveling, has seen Paris and Tokyo and walked her way across the Sahara just to prove that she could.

 

_Rome_

 

He had asked her, much like all those years ago. Back when they each carried fewer stones in their pockets and had fewer shadows haunting their footsteps. He had designed his request, his plea, to read like a gift--like a gesture.

 

But he needs something, he needs something and Caroline does not know what it is, but he must be desperate.

 

Because he is asking.

 

__________

 

“You remember all those years ago, the promises I made?”

 

“Of course, you kept your word.”

 

“I did, love. I did.” And there was that pause, the one that had made her dead heart race. “Would you take that trip I offered, all those years ago?”

 

She hadn’t needed to think twice.

 

__________

 

Caroline arrives to a house full of bodies.

 

Gore is splattered along the walls, intestines pouring out from bisected halves, appendages thrown far way from any possible owner.

 

It’s a massacre.  A finger falls from the chandelier and lands before her feet.

 

It’s a bloodbath. Red has pooled across the stone floor-- staining it, coating it--and her teeth have emerged without her consent but everything smells so _good_.

 

Caroline has already abandoned her bags, she stranded them on the curb the moment she smelled the blood, the fear.

 

This is not what she had been expecting. (But also, somewhere deep inside her gut, she realizes that it is it is it is. )

 

She hears laughter ricochet throughout the villa. She runs.

 

And finds him draped across a chaise, platter of grapes in hand, shirtless. The available skin in dressed in blood and he looks as horrible as he does glorious.

 

 _“Klaus!”_ She shouts. What else is there to say, really?

 

“Caroline.” He drawls. Almost intoxicated, lazy, unfurled in a way that he was not supposed to be. She should be angry at him, for inviting her to _this_ , but there is something wrong here. Something she is missing.

 

He is still smiling when she asks him, in a voice she reserves for moments that demand  complete caution, “What do you think this is, Klaus?”

 

His eyes are madness, he is unhinged.

 

“Welcome, love, to my masterpiece.”

 

__________

 

She leaves him to his mess. This is not what she is here for.

 

(but what is she here for, then? If not this?)

 

Caroline goes and spends the day away in shops, buying couture and spending money she promised herself she wouldn’t. It doesn’t hurt, though, that the clothes are _gorgeous_ and she has never been to Rome before and this was supposed to be…

 

It was supposed to be different. She can’t help but think it. Can’t stop the thought before it happens, can’t help but wonder that maybe she had...an idea about how this was supposed to go.

 

_Tell me about you, your hopes, your dreams--_

 

Maybe she has put too much weight on promises.

 

But, then again, so has he.

 

__________

 

Shopping bags in tow, Caroline returns to him.

 

She walks through the front door to see him on his hands and knees.

 

~~_Begging_ ~~

 

He is scrubbing the blood out of the grout.

 

“I need you, I think.”

 

His head bowed, defeated. She can’t help but look for a fallen crown, but there is nothing but a few rags and a soapy bucket.

 

She hasn’t put down her shopping yet. Caroline looks to the left of the door and sees the suitcases she abandoned have been brought in. She wonders if Klaus did that, if he bothered to clean the blood off of himself before he went to get them.

 

“You need me?” She rolls the idea over her tongue. It’s a difficult idea to swallow, this impossibly powerful man needing anybody. Anything.

 

She looks at him, still on his knees. She wonders.

 

“Something has gone wrong in me, love. Something isn’t right.”

 

And now he looks at her, his eyes just as mad as before.

 

“I think I need you to save me.”

 

Well, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. This is short but I think good?? More is coming, promise on promises, but I'ma slow mover and I won't pretend to be otherwise. 
> 
> I was planning on having longer chapters, but I think we will have to see, won't we?
> 
> Anyway, please kudos and comment! It means the world and more.


	3. somethings happening again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things become clearer (and darker)

She finds herself a witch and spells him into his bedroom. It’s strange, too close to a scene from their past. Too different. Either way it’s easier this time around, with his blood given in consent in order to bind him and more poured out in case his teeth thought that her skin would be a good place to rest.  

 

She had the villa cleaned of all traces of murder, help hired and compelled to come in and sanitize the building fully. Klaus had complained that she was trying to fumigate him, but she insisted that it was better than them jonesing for a bite due to all the blood in the air. 

 

He had conceded, if barely. 

 

“I don’t see any problem with indulging a little bit, sweetheart. Letting loose might do you some good.” Grin plastered to his face, even when he has been voluntarily imprisoned in his own home.

 

“That means a lot, coming from a mass murderer with a newly procured control issue.” Caroline was at her wits end, honestly. There was only so much she could take before she needed a spa treatment, or at very least a warm body to snack on--and avoiding the second one was the point of this whole argument, so that was kind of moot. 

 

It is a little different this time around. She can't argue with that. Not at all .

 

He is so changed, gone is the man that was always one step in front of everyone else. In his place is a madman, a maniac, someone she isn't sure she trusts, anymore.   


 

(which is a revelation onto itself, that there was trust at one point.)   
  


 

She has always know that he would never hurt her, and now that idea has faded away into nothing, at least until she could figure out how he became so unhinged. 

 

  
She calls Rebekah.    
  


 

"Do you have any idea why your brother is tearing his way through Europe, presently?"   
  


 

Rebekah huffs, indignantly. "The same reason I am on a blood binge I imagine, we are a little cursed at the moment, sweet."   
  


 

"Cursed?"   
  


 

"Did I stutter?"   
  


 

Caroline rolls this new information around in her head, cursed. It’s a little cliche, and the opposite of a little problem. In fact, it might be a catastrophe.    
  


 

Good thing Caroline is great at all things in general, but the best at dealing with these kinds of problems in particular.    
  


 

Control problems.    
  


 

_ I think I need you, sweetheart. _ __   
  


 

Something that Klaus knows very well .    


 

 

Suddenly, this all makes a lot of sense.    
  


 

Maybe he’s more control that she thought, if he is planning this well. Interesting.    
  


 

"Interesting." She says into the phone, "Do you know what the curse is?"   
  


 

"A desire for violence that has not been within us for a long time."   
  


 

"What do you mean by that?"   
  


 

"When we were created, there was a certain amount of blood that seemed to be required from us ...a punishment of our transition. Call it reparations, for all the death that Death had lost. That's how it felt anyway."   
  


 

"So what is this then, some sort of reckoning?'   
  


 

"No, dear. This is hope."   
  


 

"Hope?"   
  


 

"As in, Klaus's daughter.”

 

A shift in the cosmic balance, something that was gained when there was no visible loss. The witches, and a cost that needed to be paid. Hear is the debt. Right in front of her. How terrible, hos cosmic, how  _ interesting. _

 

"We all have blood that needs to be paid. And we can't let her pay it. Not this kind of burden, I'm afraid. "

 

"What kind of burden?”   


 

"The kind that turns the good man into the monster darling, the soul splitting kind. The kind that you want to run far far away from. Soon, I imagine. You will see, and you will run away too. She is already turning darker, and there is nothing that we can do to stop it anymore.”

 

Rebekah hangs up, and she doesn’t answer her phone again.    
  
__________

 

She isn't sure what to do. If there is anything to do be done.

 

There is something wrong in him.

 

She knocks on his door.  “Hello? You there?”

 

A body slams up against the other side, “It’s only been a few hours, love. Where would I have gone?” 

 

He is very much a caged beast, and she is very much his keeper. 

 

She opens the door, then. He is still leaning up against the barrier that remains in the doors place. 

 

He looks like a shark in a tank, swimming up against the glass. Waiting for the opportunity--

 

“Was there something you wanted?” Klaus says this with remarkable calm. He is blocking the door. He flashes his teeth but there is something with his shifting eyes that makes her want to lean just so--

 

She sees it. The mess he has made.

 

The room behind him has been leveled.

 

It’s clear that he had spent his time destroying the furniture and the fabrics and the history that he had hidden there. There are tatters of canvas, thick streaks of paint across the stone floor and splattered on the wallpapered walls. 

 

Very little remains intact.

 

She smells the blood before she sees it, the light blooms that slowly appear on his shirt. It’s his own blood--no one else could get in--so it must be from self inflicted wounds. 

 

She looks at him, very carefully. There is a panic she did not expect in his eyes.

 

“Before you ask. It helps.” His hands are flexing like they want to reach out and grab something. Like they want to try and explain this new information themselves, peel away from his wrists and do better work than his useless tongue.

 

Caroline thinks she understands. The phone call, the bloodbath she arrived to, even this.

 

“Klaus, you don’t have to try and protect me from this, you asked for my help. I’m here to offer it.”

 

She tries to say it gently, to talk him down from the ledge he is standing on so shakily. He has never been one to show weakness proudly, or at all, and she doesn't want to scare him away. 

 

Klaus, he looks at her so softly Caroline is reminded of a puppy she used to see in a pet shop window. She had walked by the store almost every day after school and it would recognize her, and she would coo at it for as long as she could before her mother would get worried about how long it was taking her to get home. Everytime she had to leave she would promise that she would come back the next day, but it’s eyes would get all big like this, like it didn’t quite believe her. 

 

One day it wasn’t there anymore. 

 

With a quick movement, he pulls his shirt over his head. Her hand rises of its own accord to her mouth. 

 

His chest is red with his own blood, oozing out of cuts that should have healed immediately.

 

She reaches out to touch--

 

“Don’t.”

 

She looks back into his eyes and they have that wild quality again. “I’m slowing down the healing on purpose. Better if they stay open for a while than have to do it again.”

 

“Again?” 

 

His nails length and his teeth drop and he is snarling. 

 

“Yeah. Again.”

 

She closes the door before he makes the first gash.

 

This has all gotten out of control.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this all in a whirlwind this afternoon, avoiding work and work and more work. 
> 
> Please, if you enjoyed, leave a kudos and a comment! It really brightens my day and all.


	4. he's ready, let him in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some pining, some violence, and an ultimatum.

He doesn’t want to blame her, really.

 

But it is...worse. Now that she has arrived. Klaus took one look at her and couldn’t help but think about her fangs biting into his wrist. The pull of her mouth on his veins, her being thankful to him, her taking another drink, another drag, another hit of him on her tongue--

 

Klaus stares at the door to his prison and laughs. 

 

What she would do if she could see him now--aroused by only a memory, and not even an errotic one. Although, he smiles to himself, everything she does has become errotic to him. He can’t blame it on his current state either.

 

She has always been enchanting. 

 

Klaus throws himself down on the bed and wraps a hand around his hard cock and tries not to think of her. A distraction, he tells himself, will be good for him. Good for this. 

 

It's not convincing, but there is a need growing in his stomach and there are no bodies around to dig into. 

 

Either way he does it, rubs his thumb over the tip and thinks of daylight and warmth and can't help but conjure the feeling of dirt and leaves under his back, under his feet. He speeds his motions up, and she is there, writhing above him, like all those years ago, all that time before this nonsense and she is screaming his name--

 

"Klaus?"

 

He stops, holds his breath, waits.

 

"Klaus? You okay?"

 

He speeds across the room and throws himself at the door. Has to control the snarl, the growl that grows in his throat. 

 

"Yes love?" The tone of his voice is low, strained. He can hear a sharp inhale.

 

_ Earth, the smell of rotting leaves and dead animals and birds that are singing singing singing and they are together-- _

 

"Are you okay?"

 

"I don't know anymore love. I don't know anymore." He doesn't know who is talking, but they sound out of air, like they can't quiet inhale. He wonders who they are. 

 

He hears a sigh through the door, through the magical barrier keeping them apart.  He gouges his nails into his thigh and tries not to think of her hands doing the same thing to his back. 

 

"Would it be okay," she pauses, she's unsure. He can't help but wonder if she knows. If she heard. Maybe she could tell when he thought of her, maybe across the ocean she had sensed his unraveling, and that is why and how she had appeared to him like a vision. Like the angels he had once been told to believe in. "If I opened--"

 

"No." He feels the press of her palm against the door, _ against the back of his neck while her heels dig into his spine-- _

 

"Open the door, Klaus. I can smell the blood." Resigned, that is the word he would use. That is what they both are. They are both resigned to the hands they have been dealt. 

 

He tries to sound flippant, "That's nothing." But knows that it will only antagonize her more, that it will draw her closer and nearer. He wants her to  _ stay _ .

 

He digs in deeper, he thinks his middle finger glances at his femur. He grows out a claw and scratches in a half moon shape.

 

"It's not! It's not nothing, I can't-- I can't let you do things like this. Curse or no--"

 

"Curse?" He asks but it is too late.

 

Caroline pulls open the door. 

 

He must be quite the sight, pants undone, shirtless, gaping holes in one thigh, blood pouring out across the floor.

 

She’s stunning.

 

He wants to  _ eat _ her. He wonders if she knows, if his eyes betray him. 

 

He breathes deep and can almost imagine her scent. 

 

He's still hard. 

 

"Hey--"

 

She reaches towards him, just enough, and her hand extends into his realm. His wolf senses an opportunity, and reaches, teeth out and ready to bite-- 

 

He yanks her in.

 

She is here now, and she can't get out.

 

"Kla--" She chokes out.

 

He sinks his teeth into the skin of her neck and drinks and drinks and drinks deeper and more than he knows he should. But his insides are screaming out and she is writhing against him in an unholy way and the worst parts of him demand blood, more blood, and she tastes  _ divine _ . 

 

When the wolf parts of him are pleased, the beast inside him mostly stated, he notices that she has stopped trying to wriggle free. He realizes that she was trying to get free. Horrified. He lets go and she drops--

 

He broke her neck.

 

_____

  
  


When Caroline wakes, tucked into the bed, he is across the room. Reading in a righted chair. He doesn’t trust himself near her, doesn’t want to risk a repeat offence.

 

He has been looking at her for hours, though. Waiting for the instinctual first inhale that would signal her return to the living--or, at the very least, breathing.

 

(Although, sometimes they were not even that.)

 

The book is merely a prop, something to do with his hands. He feels more clear headed with her blood running through his veins than he has in weeks. Maybe months. He knows better to get closer, but watching her is still a pleasant pastime. 

 

He had been working through different ways to apologize to her when she wakes up, that being the kindest term for it.

 

She finds his eyes immediately, as if she knew where he would be by instinct alone. There is no terror in them, only fury. However, instead of yelling at him, instead of reacting at all, she lays back down against the pillows and goes to sleep. 

 

He stays where he is, waits for her to wake up.

 

Anger, screaming, yelling, fury, destruction--these are the things that he understands.  

 

This? This is frightening in a way he does not comprehend. 

 

When she wakes, the sun has risen above the windows and he has taken to drawing her in the shifting light. 

 

She does not move from her reclined position; she doesn’t turn to look at him or acknowledge his observation of her. 

 

Instead, she says, plainly. 

 

“I am tired of dying for other people.”

 

He sets down his pencil, lays the sketchpad at his feet and braces his elbows on his knees.  _ This is the end this is the end of everything-- _

 

He casually replies, “But I thought that was your thing, love. Being a sacrificial lamb for those you care about?”

 

He wants her to look at him, if this is the last time she will speak to him.

 

But she won’t, and she says “I’m tired of dying for  _ you _ .”

 

Klaus, he runs his fingers through his hair and tries not to grimace. Tries not to think about the implication of her words, because it can’t mean--

 

“When I was seventeen Katerina Pierce suffocated me with a hospital pillow. Did you know about that, Klaus? Do you know why she did that? What her motivation was for killing a random teenager who had nothing to do with vampires or werewolves or--”

 

And his heart is beating so fast, like how it had beat when he had become a wolf, when he had recreated himself and he cuts her off with the answer to the question he doesn’t want to hear.

 

“Sun and Moon Curses.” 

 

She shoots straight up, stares at him her eyes are blacked, veins dancing around them and she spits at him, “Never interrupt me again.”

 

It is very hard not to find her beautiful, but that is not what this moment is about. 

 

He raises his hands, even mimes zipping his mouth shut. He won’t speak again until she’s done, no matter how much it hurts. 

 

“Or Sun and Moon Curses. I had to do with Damon, because he had picked me as his Compelled Companion of the minute because I had something to do with Elena, who was involved with Stefan, which loops back to Katherine, who is connected to who, again? Oh, that’s right. You. The great Niklaus Mikaelson, the mightiest Original who was  _ ruthless _ and  _ powerful  _ and  _ feared _ by all.”

 

And it hurts, all of this. Maybe because that is not the man he is anymore and he misses it, misses his absolute rule over everything. Maybe it’s because he never considered the collateral damage, maybe because this means he never considered her. 

 

“You needed a sacrifice, Katherine was desperate to please you, I was convenient. Ergo, I was murdered. Life cut short at the sweet sweet age of seventeen.”

 

She takes a deep breathe, and closes her eyes. The veins disappear and her teeth must have gone as well, Klaus tries very hard not to miss them. She lays back down onto his bed, stares up at the ceiling. 

 

“I don’t blame you for any of  _ this _ ,” she gestures at herself. “That would be crazy. Katherine is responsible for her own actions, her own choices. But don’t you dare hurt me again, Klaus. I mean it. Or I am walking out that door and I am never coming back.”

Klaus leans back in his chair, imagines the sky above him, and knows that it's true. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dip my toes back into the Klaus pov. 
> 
> I think this train is getting somewhere.


	5. someone who's hungry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things have to get worse before they get better.

Caroline is a lot of things, in the moment Klaus bites into her neck. 

 

She is a dying woman, she is food, she is a thing he thinks he can devour, she is trapped and hurt and contorted into something he can consume--and then she is dead.

 

She wakes up in his bed. Still, a dying woman. Her bones ache and it feels like her veins are rubbing up against themselves, that her body is turning to dust already.

 

She’s starving, above all else, but she has been hungry before. Ask any teenage girl, and they will tell you.

 

Caroline, bone tired and weak, is not ready for the fight she knows they are going to have. She feels him notice her waking, all the way across the room. So instead she goes to sleep.

 

________

 

When she wakes up a second time she sticks to consciousness and does not waste her fury.

 

He doesn’t fight back and she almost feels bad, but the venom he poured into her is already doing its job. She wonders, idly, if he even knows he’s killing her. If he is that far gone.

 

How many times will she die by his teeth? How many times will he bring her back from the edge before he can’t, before he won’t bother trying--

 

Tired. Bone tired. 

 

She gets out of the bed and leaves the room. She is not the one it is supposed to hold.

 

________

 

Caroline immediately downs the vials they filled for this kind of emergency, the open seeping wound on her neck closing in an instant. 

 

She breathes deeply and then walks back to the door, the one she left open. 

 

Klaus hasn’t moved, not since she woke up the first time. Not since he deposited her on the bed. He’s sitting on the only chair he hasn’t destroyed, so that might have something to do with it. Caroline drags a chair from down the hall into the open doorway, sits and takes out the book she brought. 

 

She starts reading.

 

About an hour in she hears him moving around the room, slowly righting the overturned furniture and organizing the drawings and books he scattered across the floor. He hangs up the clothes he flug from the wardrobe and even lines up his surviving pencils in order of lead weight. 

 

She ignores him.

 

He strips naked and changes into an fresh shirt and slacks, miraculously finding clothing that is not shredded or bloodied. He looks at her. He covers the bed in clean sheets and arranges the untorn pillows. He looks at her. He goes into the bathroom and returns with a clothe and starts scrubbing the floor and the walls free of his blood. He looks at her. He tears off the sullied wallpaper and washes away the glue, the claw marks remaining but the walls otherwise spotless. 

 

When his bedroom finally looks livable, Klaus pulls out a sketchpad and drags a chair into the doorway across from her. He sits down and starts to draw.

 

He does not look at her.

 

Hours pass, the sun goes down. In the dimming light, she finishes her book and leaves. 

 

She returns the next day with a new one, sits down and spends the day like that again. And the next day, and the next.

 

On the fourth day he asks “Are you never going to speak to me again?”

 

She doesn’t respond.

 

On the fifth day he starts begging.

 

“Please love, please. Are you just going to sit there and ignore me? How is this helping anything, Caroline? What. You want me to become unhinged? Is that it? Me, a caged beast and you ignoring me? One of us is going to break. It will not be me.”

 

Caroline rolls her eyes.

 

He sleeps the entirety of the sixth.

 

On the seventh day, he walks over to the wall next to the door and sinks to the ground. The one place in the room where he won’t have to look at her. 

 

“I know I said that the first time I fell in love was Tatia, but that wasn’t right.  _ Isn’t  _ right. I first time I came close was in my second century, I think. I don’t quite remember the year, though I remember the woman. Irene, a kitchen girl at some landowners home in early France.”

 

She does not put down her book, she does not make a sound.

 

“I had come back from hunting with the dogs and I saw her embroidering. An intricate nature scene that was perfectly depicted, with light and shadows and movement and life, even though she only had one color thread. I asked her how a kitchen girl came to have that much skill and she couldn’t stop apologizing. I kept telling her that it was okay, that everything was fine. She offered the piece to me in order to buy my silence, and I couldn’t help but accept.”

 

Caroline does not dare inhale.

 

“I went back to the kitchens the next day and gave her one of my drawings, I wanted her approval. When I returned a few days later she had improved upon my sketch, added in details with a fine hand. That’s when I asked her to teach me, to show me how to be better. I had never had patience for instruction, but she was--different.”

 

“Elijah and Kol wanted to keep moving, they feared father was going to hear of our whereabouts, even across the ocean. I told them it was nothing to worry about, mostly because I...couldn’t convince Irene to leave. She had a life there. I couldn’t bear to remove her from it, to drag her into my mess.”

 

“I think it was Kol that threatened to kill her. He knew I would never leave if she was alive. When I still refused, well...he swiftly ended up in a box. And then we left, he was right. Even if other monsters didn’t come, we were already there.”

 

“I found out not much later that my father had razed the town. I was too frightened to check, but I was assured no one made it out alive. I didn’t care about someone like that, unselfishly, for a very long time.”

 

She can hear no rustling no movement no breath. She risks an inhale--

 

“Caroline--”

 

She’s gone.

 

________

 

Caroline spends the next day enjoying Rome, visiting cafes and museums. She lavishes in the sunlight and the warmth of the air, lingers a little too long on statues and art.  _ Old,  _ she thinks.  _ One day maybe I will become as old as stone.  _

 

There are a few paintings she does not look at, the ones that she knows bear his skill even if they do not carry his name.

 

Caroline tries so hard not to think of him, of how he used to be. Memories of an easel, of a burning room full of drawings and promises.

 

_ Well, I don’t know much about art. _

 

He had laughed and tried to explain the world to her. 

 

She had lied to him then. She is sure that even now he would be unable to tell, men never can. Caroline is sure that she could tell a man she was unsure of how to breathe, of how her lungs worked, of how to walk, and he would leap at the chance to tell her. 

 

People have always seen the least in her, even him. Despite his denials she has always been another pawn, another piece in the game. 

 

Caroline is tired. She compels a man on the street to go and tell him she’s leaving.

 

________

 

She does not stay away for long, just travels along the coast for a while. 

 

He’s still there, though.

 

“You’ve been away for a while.”

 

Klaus remains composed, though the room has returned to its state of ruin. He never stay docile for long. 

 

“Thought I was gone for good?” She throws her coat down on the chair that has remained outside his door. It has been waiting for her.

 

There is a giant gash on his arm that’s still bleeding freely. If he was a normal man he would probably be dead. Klaus doesn’t smile. 

 

“You make the rules, love. Means you can break them whenever you like.” He drags a talon along his shoulder. Caroline considers holding her fangs back, but instead lets them drop.

 

Klaus surges towards the door in an instant, the invisible barrier between them the only thing holding him back, and Caroline is almost afraid.

 

“What rules have I broken, Klaus? What promises have I made?” She moves towards the door, towards the wolf in his eyes. He writhes uncontrollably, like he is trying to get a bite of her. Suddenly, he is contorting, his bones snapping and reforming. 

 

He cannot answer her, not now. Not like this.

 

He is a wolf, and Caroline doesn’t know how to get him back.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time! No see! Life is a mess and so am I, but hopefully this chapter isn't
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated--
> 
> Enjoy!


	6. The Wolfman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline is out of her depth. 
> 
> (She wonders if she is allowed to miss him)

 

She doesn’t know what to do. 

 

Two weeks in, a wild wolf tearing through the house with abandon. There is no furniture left unscathed. The floor has claw marks in it: wood and carpet and stone. Gouged deep.

 

He doesn’t howl, though. He doesn’t bite, either. Won’t get within five feet of her without flashing teeth in an empty threat and sprinting away.

 

Caroline wonders if there is any of him left inside the animal. She’s not sure she could recognize him, even if he’s there.

 

It’s strange that she seems to collect werewolves with such ease. She’d never liked dogs. A rabid stray had once followed Caroline, trying to take a bite out of her heels as she pedaled home. Her mom shot it. 

 

It was the first time Caroline had seen something die. It was the first and only time she had seen something die and had been grateful. 

 

So she does the thing any person does when they are presented with questions, she googles. 

 

_ Things wolves like?  _

 

Which tells her what she had already known. Wolves like to hunt, they like to run, they like each other. Klaus wasn’t being afforded any of those things, outside of an astounding amount of meat.

 

What she did learn was that a lone wolf was often afraid. That it was a pair of wolves that was given territory. That alone Klaus must be feeling very powerless, and that he must feel very alone. 

 

Who else was there for him, besides her? 

 

The first week Caroline had been focused on corralling Klaus within the villa. His bedroom was not enough space for a wild wolf to roam. Even if Klaus was still in control of his actions. 

 

The time not spent contacting witches and other werewolves for wards and information, Caroline had utilized by yelling at Klaus. She was still  _ pissed  _ at him, and at the time his sudden transformation had come off as a play for her sympathy. But he wasn’t the type to willingly transform, and he had seemed so unhinged, so feral, and then—as a wolf—suddenly subdued. 

 

Of course, she had also gone through his things, found his phone and repeatedly called all of his siblings. 

 

To Elijah: 

 

_ “Hello? I know we’ve never officially met, but I’m Caroline and I’ve knowingly trapped myself in a villa with Klaus? He’s a wolf at the moment, which is why I’m calling… meeting you over  the phone--what do I even do about that! Um. Call me back?” _

 

To Rebekah:

 

_ “Rebekah! Please call me back. You’re brother has been a wolf for 3 days! This is an ISSUE!” _

 

To Kol:

 

_ “I’ll send you a video of Klaus grooming himself if you call me back.” _

 

But who else was there? The one name she didn’t want to dial. 

 

Reservedly,

 

To Hope:

 

_ “Hey sweetie. I’m helping your father deal with some problems at the moment, do you know anything about forced hybrid transformation? Everything is okay, I promise! But do call me back when you can. Okay. I’ll talk to you later?” _

 

After that she was left with waiting. She spent a couple hours scrolling online, wondering if she should buy Klaus a chew toy. 

 

________

 

The third morning of the third week, Caroline is awoken by a wet nose pressing itself into her open hand. 

 

She looks down, and there, at the side of her bed is Klaus nuzzling her palm. 

“Oh, so now you want to be near me?” She grunts. The sun is low in the sky--it’s early. She pulled her hand alway and his front paw rose up to rest on the bed, silently asking.

 

She considers, for a second, if she should let him on the bed. But then she decides, “anything you wouldn’t do in human form, you can’t do in wolf form. Got it?” 

 

If a wolf could raise an eyebrow, Klaus did. He didn’t fight it though, and instead he loops around his body, head towards tail, circling, and then lays down on the floor next to the bed. He rests his head on his front paws and looks up at her, and seems to be content. 

 

How different from the day before, when he had stayed resolutely on the opposite side of the villa, when she had stared at his phone so forcefully she was sure that it was bound to combust. 

 

And what is she supposed to do with this, now? Klaus, complacent and laying at the side of her bed, waiting for her to get up. 

 

It was one thing to want to help a suffering man, even if he was a killer. Even if he was cursed. Even if he was the worst thing that had ever happened to the world--

 

How do you even begin to save a thousand year old monster? It’s not like that had ever been her plan, saving the big bad. 

 

Because bad people,  _ evil _ people, always seem to have the upper-hand, and that’s what makes them so easy to hate. They’re the winners, and the heroes are the underdogs and you can root for them. The truly evil never seem to take a punch and for so long Klaus had outwitted everyone so thoroughly that he had become untouchable. The idea of anything ever hurting him seemed unfathomable.

 

And yet, here he was. Decidedly out of control.

 

So maybe, the necessity of being saved proved that he was human enough to deserve it. Help, or at least the attempt at it. 

 

He was human enough to ask, and that meant that she should be strong enough to try. 

 

Right? Because if she didn’t that meant that no one would. And Caroline was strong, she could carry this burden. 

 

At the very least, she could be here for Klaus. Who had always, in some convoluted way, been there for her. When she needed him. 

 

“What am I supposed to do, Klaus? I don’t know how do handle this alone...I don’t. There isn’t anyone else.” She hears him huff from the floor, and she rolls her eyes.

 

“I’m just saying, we’re alone here.” 

 

She lowers her arm over the side of the bed, and she feels him move his head under her fingers. 

 

Slowly, she pets behind his ears with her fingertips. He sighs, and she wonders if she is allowed to miss him. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will I ever stop being the slowest writer alive? Only time will tell! (lol) 
> 
> But honestly, earnestly, sorry this break was so terribly long. And the worst thing? I can't promise I'll be any faster with the next chapter because I am the *worst* human alive. 
> 
> YIKES.


	7. Howl and Moan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They awaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so much drama
> 
> or
> 
> Klaus' P.O.V is back

He is a beast. He realizes this of course, that much is inescapable.

 

Fur and paws and fangs--maybe fangs he’s used to, but the others--beast.

 

He avoids a glimmering surface-- a mirror.

 

What a thing to long for, to hold himself up to a mirror and recognize what he sees.

 

If there is one benefit to being a wolf, it’s that he knows what he wants. Knows what he craves. 

 

_ Meat, rest, quiet, hunt, blood, quiet, pack-- _

 

He feels more like himself than he’s felt in a long time. He’s not sure how long. 

 

Time has drizzled away, even more than his forever has pushed past the concept of time. 

 

As a wolf everything is both seconds and millenia.

 

_ Perhaps that’s why animals feel no dread. They cannot tell how long they have-- how little. _

 

There is now. And not, and because of this he feels very lonely-- he feels afraid.

 

There is a woman in the house he sometimes knows. Sometimes. He sees the outline of a body and runs because who might be coming for him. Who? He remembers that he is not a good man. That he might be a great one.

 

Who has the time for those distinctions when you are running for your life? 

 

If one thing has remained of him, he knows what it means to be hiding. From someone, something.  _ yourself. _

 

Take a look in the mirror. 

 

He is not sure how long he avoids it, _ days months weeks.  _ But he finds a pane of glass and searches for a reflection. Sees the lupin eyes that echo back. The nose, elongated and damp. His ears, he sees them flick with recognition. With something all on their own.

 

He feels the sudden urge to howl. Maybe this thing that moves with him will howl back.

 

A flicker of yellow.

 

“I see your vanity isn’t just skin deep.” The voice is rye and tumbling, and makes him feel something in his bones. He turns towards it.

 

It’s the woman again. She shines even in the low light. The windows, he sees, are covered in a fog. He wonders if it would burn to jump through it.

 

The woman moves towards a chair resting in a doorway. It faces an empty room. She drags her fingers over the top of the straight back. 

 

“Are you in there, Klaus?”

 

What a thing to ask, to know. 

 

_ Klaus? _

 

He knows the sound, feels the claws extending. 

 

“The floors can only take so much of this,” she sighs. 

  
  


He’s running before he realizes she isn’t trying to chase him.

 

________

 

He stares at the mirror a lot.

 

_ KlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlaus _KlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlaus_ _KlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlaus_ _

 

He knows there is something to that sound. The woman is always saying it to him, at him. When she thinks he might be able to hear. What does it mean? Why why does she keep saying it--so coldly. It feels like a rasp. A bark.

 

It makes his fur stand on end. But he didn’t always have fur, did he? No. nonono this is new.

 

There is a window next to the mirror, through the reflection he can see the night sky. He sees a bright light and knows it’s the moon.

 

It is big and round in the sky and some deep part of him tenses. Braces for something to come. He jerks away from the mirror, keeps his hind legs against the wall. 

 

It would be better if someone else was here. Someone to guard his sides, an extra set of teeth. 

 

He smells the air and can smell her and it is almost like she was waiting.

 

He goes to find her. 

 

________

 

He wakes on the floor with her hand in his hair. He turns and sees that it is hanging off the bed. 

 

Last night. He remembers softly padding in and looking up at her. It had been such a gentle comfort to see her, to be near. 

 

He had looked out at the moon and wondered if there was a reason it called to him. He had looked at the bed, the one she rested in, and had known the cause.

 

Klaus had waited until the early morning, until the moon had become hidden by the sun, to approach her. 

 

“Why now?” she had asked, and he couldn’t tell her even if he could speak. Maybe it was the moon. Maybe it was simply time, maybe it was trust.

 

Maybe he was lonely.

 

“We are alone here.” 

 

It was the kind of thing that can be said only in the early morning. The sun so low that it is too far to listen. A whisper no one else in the world that can hear.

 

He knows now that she meant it as a lamentation, but it had felt like a promise. A comfort. Her fingers had danced along the ridge of his spine, between his lupine eyes.

 

He knew that he knew her, and that he trusted her.

 

It’s midmorning now, they dozed off. He doesn’t want to dislodge her hand, it had stayed when he turned his head to look. 

 

A finger moves, traces the curve of his ear.

 

He tries not to breathe. And then.

 

_ Curve _ .

 

He jerks up. Her hand withdraws in a flash but he is already reaching for it.

 

He holds her hand in his, interlaces their fingers. It is a fascinating thing, to hold. To be held.

 

“Klaus.” It’s a soft whisper from the bed. Klaus, he looks and meets her eyes. 

 

“ _Caroline._ ” He speaks but it is rough, it sounds more like a growl than anything. Still, it is her name. He knows--

 

Caroline, she sighs. Lightly. Then she withdraws her hand from his, and he doesn’t try to keep it. Her skin is soft as it slides away. She keeps looking at him.

 

The skin between her eyes is scrunched, and she asks “is it you?” and he wants to press his thumb--the one he now remembers he has--into her forehead and tell her he is fine. But he isn’t sure.

 

“How long?” He doesn’t know. It is surrounded by a haze. Everything, since she arrived, since she left, how much has he thought of her? She is always leaving, now that he is back--

 

“Klaus? A little bit more than three weeks. I think it was the moon, it must have been--”

 

She pulls away into the bed, and his heart races, “NO!” and he reaches to grab her. The world blurs for a moment, and he is holding the sheets where she had just been and she is across the room even farther from him and--

 

“Klaus! Calm down, okay? What’s wrong, what’s going on?” Caroline, she’s holding up her hands. Outstretched. He’s still holding the sheets, the empty sheets. There’s a vibration coming from inside his chest and he, where is she going?

 

Klaus watches as her feet are slowly backing towards the door. He leaps towards it but she is already there, closing it shut from the other side and he is alone again and he’s  _ howling _ .

 

He’s scratching his nails into the door, he has to get to her, she is on the other side and has left him. She has left him. 

 

Wet slides down his arms and it is blood, he can smell it in the air. 

 

“I’m right here, Klaus. Just, tell me what’s going on.” Her voice, it shakes. She’s afraid, something is scaring her, she’s afraid--

 

“Caroline,” he whines, and it is a whine, and that vibration in his chest, that’s a growl. He stares at his hands, the claws that have grown. “I--” There is wet on his cheeks, too. “I’m sorry-- I. I’m backing away from the door. I’m--” He draws his hands away from the door and withdraws until his back hits the wall. 

 

It’s warm where the sun has touched it.

 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

 

But he knows he needs her to stay.


End file.
